A quiet blog that discusses LGBT issues, fiction, publishing, pop culture, and romance novels that may or may not be erotic romance.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Quilts, by Joyce Carol Oates

In a recent issue of The Saturday Evening Post (I still read that one in print, too), there's a wonderful article by author, Joyce Carol Oates. Here's a short description:

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. “Quilts” is from the anthology What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women Remember a Favorite Gift, edited by Elizabeth Benedict, to be published by Algonquin Books, Spring 2013. She is also author of the forthcoming story collection Black Dahlia & White Rose (September, 2012, Ecco). A professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since

I've read most of her work. I was supposed to hear her speak at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, but came down with the flu and couldn't go. She lives in Princeton, NJ, so I'm hoping I'll get another chance, eventually. When I came across this piece I'm linking to now I wanted to share for those who aren't familiar with her work.

I've heard it said that authors don't need to be readers in order to write. I don't get that and I never will. If you don't read authors like Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison and Anne Tyler you're not only missing out on great fiction but missing a chance to see how a proven author does it right. I think if more people did read these authors, and others like them, we'd see less horrible writing issues, like said bookisms and dialogue tags with bad adverbs. I remember a very dumb business owner when I owned my art gallery in New Hope. He had this idea he would turn his low end gift shop into a high end gallery with upscale merchandise. His shop turned into a ticky tacky over-priced boutique with some of the gaudiest, ugliest merchandise I've ever seen. And that's because you can't run a high end gallery with upscale furniture unless you've actually shopped in a few to see what they are like. This guy never got past WalMart.

In any event, here's an excerpt from The Quilt, followed by a link where you can read the article in full.

It is not a large quilt but very beautiful, I think: comprised of numerous brightly colored knitted-wool squares of every imaginable color—red, yellow, green, blue, purple, magenta, brown, cream.The pattern is neither simple nor complex. It isn’t, like some quilts, a labyrinthine design.

You'll like her. She's a professor at Princeton, and she's been nominated for numerous fiction awards. I don't know exactly what she's been nominated for or what's she's won because I don't follow those things closely. But you will like her work.

Second Chance: The Complete Series

About Me

Ryan
@ryanfield
Hybrid author of over 100 published modern romance novels and stories, including AN OFFICER AND HIS GENTLEMAN, FANGSTERS, THE RAINBOW DETECTIVE AGENCY and best selling VIRGIN BILLIONAIRE SERIES. (The profile photo isn't very good, but it's really me and it's recent from 2017. I'm not supposed to be a photographer. )
RfieldJ@aol.com

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At a glance, Anton Pagano looks and sounds just like any other twenty-something. He lives in a mansion in northern New Jersey with his mom and dad, and he's never had to worry about anything other than his wardrobe, his latest new car, and the secret love affair he's been having for years. However, Anton has more than just the love affair to hide: he belongs to a Sicilian vampire mobster clan that migrated to New Jersey in the late 1800s.

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